Depression Quest is an interactive fiction game where you play as someone living with depression. You are given a series of everyday life events and have to attempt to manage your illness, relationships, job, and possible treatment. This game aims to show other sufferers of depression that they are not alone in their feelings, and to illustrate to people who may not understand the illness the depths of what it can do to people.

Too young to burn out

I need another vacation because the one I just took just didn’t cut it. I (reluctantly) planned to travel to Prague for a few days, but pushed back on the actual booking until I decided to stay home. In the end I spent a whole week programming on my indie-site. And it was fun, I got a lot done, but I missed something. My vacation.

You can’t get away from (job-)work by doing other (hobby-)work, at least I can’t. I felt like I did and then, one day after my socalled vacation, I felt as exhausted as before it.

So now my boss told me to take a day off. Which feels like a failure. Like I am a failure. This is what I associate with a vacation. As if I was slacking off while everybody else was doing the work that I didn’t want to do. Because I’m lazy or something.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful for my workplace and the people in it. That actually care about me when I can’t. That gratefulness has a dark side, though. That dark side lives in my head and it calls itself guilt.

I feel guilty for not working because these people were kind enough to let me work there when a lot of other companies.. I’m not sure what would happen in other companies because this is my first job I’v ever got and I’ve worked there for nearly five years and I truly love the people there.

Isn’t it normal to feel guilty when you take a break from work because you have to, because you need to?